All Posts Tagged With: "freedom of association"

Neutrality Agreements: Bid for Union Power

David Denholm is the president of the Public Service Research Foundation (www.psrf.org), an independent research and education organization that studies unionism and union influence on public policy. All across the land organized labor is using political influence to push for public policies that facilitate imposing unionism on employees. One such policy requires employers doing business [...]

1Apr2003 | | 2 comments | Continued

More Free Than Ever?

In a November 2002 Washington Times column titled “Americans Enjoy More Freedom Today Than Ever,” Jonah Goldberg stated, “Today, we worry desperately about our personal and political freedom even though we are more free today than at any time in our history.” Attempts to measure freedom are inherently difficult because we must weight our freedoms [...]

1Mar2003 | | 0 comments | Continued

Labor Freedom Makes Sense

If compulsory unionism were put to a moral test, it would flunk without debate. Forcing a worker to join and pay dues to an organization he doesn’t want to represent him is a manifest violation of that worker’s free will and right of contract. It so happens that it also fails the economic test, as two recent studies strongly demonstrate.

1Feb2003 | | 0 comments | Continued

On Freedom of Association

Freedom of association is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The relevant portion states, “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging . . . the right of the people peaceably to assemble.” Seems simple enough. We may assemble ourselves into whatever peaceful associations we choose, and the government is forbidden [...]

1Jul2002 | | 11 comments | Continued

Government-Sector Unionism

In my February column I gave two examples of the decline of unionism in the private sector and pointed out that the picture is very different in the government sector. Whereas the unions’ private-sector market share in 2001 was 9 percent, in the government sector it was 37.4 percent (down slightly from 37.5 percent in [...]

1May2002 | | 3 comments | Continued

A Reply to a Labor Priest

In his 1981 encyclical letter, Laborem Exercens, Pope John Paul II declared that workers have “the right of association, that is to form associations for the purpose of defending the vital interests of those employed in the various professions. These associations are called labor or trade unions” (§20). He went on to say that unions [...]

1Sep2001 | | 3 comments | Continued

Shameless in California

A year ago October the California legislature and Governor Gray Davis enacted SB645, which empowers unions with monopoly bargaining privileges at California State University and the University of California to extract monthly fees from the paychecks of faculty and staff who want to remain union-free. Every Democrat and two Republicans in the legislature voted in [...]

1Nov2000 | | 1 comment | Continued

A Light Goes Out in New Zealand

I have often referred to New Zealand’s 1991 Employment Contracts Act (ECA) as a model of voluntary unionism that we in the United States would be wise to emulate. Notwithstanding its shortcomings—including its mandatory personal grievance provisions, its creation of the specialist Employment Court, and its failure to do anything about the minimum-wage law—the ECA [...]

1Sep2000 | | 0 comments | Continued

Freedom of Association

Imagine being awakened one morning by a loud knocking on your door. You stumble downstairs and find your neighbor standing before you with a friendly smile across his face and a frightening rifle across his shoulder. Behind him you see your yard surrounded by a newly built barbed-wire fence. “Hi!” he says. “You’re gonna love [...]

1Aug2000 | | 1 comment | Continued

An Open Letter to the California Legislature

As a student of public choice theory, I understand why you support SB 1241, a mandatory agency-shop bill for California State University (CSU) faculty. After all, in the words of Ambrose Bierce, “politics is a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.” The California Faculty Association (CFA) supports you in the political marketplace, [...]

1Aug1999 | | 3 comments | Continued

Academic Freedom on Religious Campuses

James Otteson teaches in the department of philosophy at the University of Alabama. In a free society adults should be able to associate, establish institutions, and order their lives without interference, provided that in doing so they initiate no violence against others. That indeed is the definition of an open, peaceful society. One thing in [...]

1Aug1999 | | 1 comment | Continued

Tony Blair and Fairness at Work

Tony Blair, prime minister of Great Britain, heads the “New Labour” Party. The old Labour Party was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), the umbrella organization for most British unions. In 1976 Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan asserted that “no modern government can govern against the trade unions.” During the 1978–79 [...]

1May1999 | | 0 comments | Continued

The ILO’s Strange Use of Words

Last June the International Labor Organization (ILO) put forth its “Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work.” U.S. Labor Secretary Alexis Herman asserted that the declaration is “a big step forward for the ILO and its members as we enter the 21st century.” John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, called it “an historic breakthrough [...]

1Feb1999 | | 0 comments | Continued

Discrimination and Liberty

(Editor’s Note: We herewith inaugurate a new monthly feature: The Pursuit of Happiness. Its regular contributors will be Walter Williams, one of the most prominent defenders of liberty today, and Charles Baird, an economist specializing in the freedom of workers. Guest contributors will also occupy this space.) How much should we care if people discriminate? [...]

1Apr1998 | | 1 comment | Continued

The Benefits of Immigration

In my October “Notes from FEE” I challenged a case, made by some market-advocates, for immigration restrictions. I have since received scolding letters and E-marls from numerous people predicting that open borders would bring all manner of calamities. While some writers were less certain than others about the baleful consequences of unregulated immigration, only one [...]

1Dec1997 | | 60 comments | Continued

Affirmative Action: Institutionalized Inequality

Mr. Mulcahy is a student and Dr. Block a former professor of economics at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. Dr. Block is currently chairman of the department of economics at the University of Central Arkansas. In 1961 President John F. Kennedy established a program of “affirmative action” with the declaration of [...]

1Oct1997 | | 4 comments | Continued

A Free-Market Case Against Open Immigration?

Recently, upon finishing Leonard Read’s superb book Anything That’s Peaceful (FEE, 1964), I felt a surge of thankfulness and honor. I’m thankful that such a wise man lived and wrote, and I’m honored to now lead the organization that he founded. Leonard Read was truly a great liberal—a liberal, of course, in the original and [...]

1Oct1997 | | 5 comments | Continued
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